Monday, February 02, 2009

Sick London at the Bishopsgate Institute

Talk Doctors, 'Delusions' and the Great Wen: Alternative Medicine's LondonRoots

Speaker: Roberta Bivins

Tuesday 10 February • 7.30pm

Tickets: £7, concs £5; advance booking required

By the 1830s a wide range of alternative and cross-cultural medicalpractices were already flourishing in London. From acupuncture to animalmagnetism, middle-class Londoners could take their pick of the latestmedical fads, fancies, and innovations from around the world. 'Regular'medicine raged, newspapers scoffed and scandalmongered — but 'alternativemedicine' was nonetheless installed as a feature of London life. Drawing onthe accounts of doctors and patients alike, this talk will look at the longhistory and enduring legacy of alternative medicine in London. RobertaBivins is an Associate Professor of the History of

Medicine at University of Warwick. Her work has examined the cross-culturaltransmission of medical expertise, and the history of alternative andglobal medicine.

Walk Medical Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia

Guide: Diane Burstein

Sunday 22 February • 2.00pm (duration approx two hours)

Tickets: £7, concs £5; advance booking required

Join London Blue Badge Guide Diane Burstein for a walking tour around someLondon areas with medical connections. You will find out about the firstfemale medical practitioners, a world famous children's hospital, ahospital created specially for Italians, a nursing home run by a teaheiress and the first family planning clinic in the UK.

Diane Burstein is a qualified London Blue Badge and City of London Guideand author of London Then and Now.

Talk Hospitals of London

Speaker: Jonathan Evans

Tuesday 3 March • 7.30pm

Tickets: £7, concs £5; advance booking required

Jonathan Evans looks at the hospitals of London, as well as some furtherafield, and touches upon their fascinating histories. The talk covers along historical period — from the early Middle Ages to the present day —and draws upon archival records and historical illustration collections. Helooks at the evolution of hospitals, from Christian monastic and royalfoundations through to the emergence of NHS Trusts.

Jonathan Evans has been Archivist and Curator at The Royal London HospitalArchives & Museum since 1989 and is Hon. Apothecaries Lecturer in theHistory of Medicine to Barts and The London School of Medicine andDentistry. His publications include Treves and the Elephant Man and EdithCavell.

Talk Nicholas Culpeper: The Rebel Healer of Spitalfields

Speaker: Benjamin Woolley

Tuesday 10 March • 7.30pm

Tickets: £7, concs £5; advance booking required

Nicholas Culpeper's 1652 book The Complete Herbal is one of the mostsuccessful English books in history, and has led to him being hailed as afounder of alternative medicine. But Culpeper was also one of London's mostimportant radicals during the Civil War.

Through his practice as a writer and healer based just a few yards from thesite of Bishopsgate Institute, Culpeper not only challenged the medicalestablishment by providing free healthcare to the poor, but helped spark arevolution that laid the foundations

of modern democracy.

Benjamin Woolley is author of The Herbalist, the first full-lengthbiography of Nicholas Culpeper. He is an award-winning writer andbroadcaster, whose latest book, Savage Kingdom, tells the story ofJamestown, England's first successful colony in America.

Talk Bedlam: London and its Mad SOLD OUT

Speaker: Catharine Arnold

Tuesday 24 March • 7.30pm

Talk The Roots of the Health Service

Speaker: Geoffrey Rivett

Tuesday 7 April • 7.30pm

Tickets: £7, concs £5; advance booking required

The NHS was built upon clinical services that had evolved over thecenturies and was shaped by political debates that were even older. Thistalk considers the local east London population in the late 19th century,its health and social problems. Geoffrey will explore the professional careavailable from nearby doctors and hospitals and how these were financed. Hewill also cover some of the debates, reports and controversies aboutcharitable and state health care in the run-up to the NHS Act 1946.

Geoffrey Rivett is a contemporary medical historian and vice chair of theCouncil of Governors of the Homerton Hospital Foundation Trust. He workedfirst as a general practitioner and later in the Department of Health andhas published two books on London's hospital system and the history of theNHS.

BOOKING INFORMATION

• Concessions are available to senior citizens, registered disabled people,full-time students, Bishopsgate Institute students and the unwaged.

• Advance booking is required where indicated. Places are limited so earlybooking is advised.